Shenanigans in Novaya Zemlya

Jeffrey Lewis 0:05

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk Podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:23

And I am Dr. Aaron Stein, Chief Content Officer over at War on the Rocks. It's been a minute, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey 0:30

It's been too long, my friend. I have nearly completed my around the world journey. I have been in D.C. I have been in Bangalore. I have been in Berlin, stopped by the Fuhrer bunker. Now I am in New York, having just recorded a live episode of my new podcast, The Reason We're All Still Here. I am taking a couple of mental health days and then I am going back to California.

Aaron 0:58

I'm going to California tomorrow, too. You'll be in the north, I'll be in the south. Good old-fashioned showdown between which side's better.

Jeffrey 1:06

I mean, I don't really understand the rivalry because they're so different. They are.

Aaron 1:12

One side has water, the other doesn't.

Jeffrey 1:15

Your tacos are better.

Aaron 1:17

They are. No doubt. I was in San Francisco two weeks ago and I had a taco. They were subpar. They were okay. I'll say they were okay.

Jeffrey 1:25

I mean, it's fine. We have one... Maybe two really good taquerias in the Monterey area. Whereas when I was just in LA for the American Political Science Association, it was just tacos galore. Every random taco place was just life-changingly wonderful.

Aaron 1:45

I also joined Blue Sky today. Do you want to know what the first interaction I had was?

Jeffrey 1:49

I do. What?

Aaron 1:51

So my first interaction, literally within one second of signing up, was from jasontw.bsky.social was asking, when's the next Arms Control Walk podcast coming out? I was scolded. Yeah, sorry, man. But point taken. But we're not here to talk about tacos or my new social media account. We are here to talk about – What do we want to call this?

Russian paranoia and just like deep-seated sort of animosity towards its current political predicament leading itself to wanting to test nuclear weapons again?

Jeffrey 2:30

Yeah, I think we call this shenanigans at Novaya Zemlya.

Aaron 2:35

Okay. Yeah, we'll write that down. I'm actually starting to get a little concerned that they're actually going to detonate a nuclear weapon. I mean, maybe that's a little too strong. Do you know why that is, Aaron? You tell me.

Jeffrey 2:48

Because they're going to detonate a nuclear weapon.

Aaron 2:51

You really think that? So hold on. Let's start at the beginning. You and your team, I think it was in CNN, right, had a piece where you were talking about, or at least you had identified with, satellite imagery prep work they're doing at Novaya Zemlya, which it looks like they're busting it out of mothballs.

Jeffrey 3:09

Yeah, so just to walk through the evidence, here are all the things we're seeing that suggest that Russia might resume explosive testing at Novaya Zemlya. The first Bit of information is that the Russians have been talking about doing that, which is not like a trivial factor. Let me summarize the evidence for you. In February, Putin laid the groundwork to resume testing.

He said, we know for certain some politicians in Washington are already pondering live nuclear tests, especially since the United States is developing innovative new nuclear weapons. That's the justification. Given these circumstances, he went on, the defense ministry and Rosatom must make everything ready for Russia to conduct nuclear tests. We will not be the first to proceed with these tests, but if the United States goes ahead with them, we will as well.

Then in August, the foreign ministry spokesperson, who has an unhealthy joy for strawberries, harshly criticized, quote, the destructive and irresponsible actions of the United States in not ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. And then the next day, Kommersant, which is not really state media... Reported that there was a debate inside the Russian government about withdrawing its signature from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to create what was called symmetry with the United States.

And that commerçant story was picked up in Russian state media. That is followed by, Putin said today. Mm-hmm. At Valdai, and I think Elena Chernyanko has all of his statements. He said... Experts say that with new weapons, it is necessary to make sure the warhead will work without failures and that nuclear tests should be carried out. I am not ready to say now whether we need to conduct tests or not, but it is possible to mirror the actions of the United States when they signed but did not ratify the treaty while we signed and ratified it in principle.

But this is a question for the deputies of the state Duma, who are oh so independent, I'm sure. Theoretically, it is possible to withdraw a ratification of the CTBT. If we do this, it will be quite enough. So, just vocally, they're making clear that they're heading toward withdrawing their signature... And withdrawing their ratification from the treaty. Putin is sort of laying the groundwork of, oh, but we're not really going to start testing unless the Americans test.

But he's also saying that we're getting ready to test. So to me, that looks very much like they're moving in this direction. And then you have all the geospatial pieces that we can talk about. Sergei Shoigu, the defense minister, visited Novaya Zemlya. And, you know, that place is just f***ing busy. They got all kinds of stuff going on there, some of which we documented in satellite images taken by Planet that we put on CNN.

So, like, yeah, you know, like, looks like a duck. Quacks like a duck. It's a f***ing duck.

Aaron 6:44

Right. And I think it also comes on the heels of this very robust – I'm not sure if it's officially state-sanctioned debate in Russia itself about whether or not you can use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine or even on NATO targets without inviting a counter-strike, right? The Karganov debate that's going on. And so I do wonder if like they're actually openly wrestling with what's happening, which is I think the coercive power of their nuclear weapons has degraded as the war has gone on longer.

Jeffrey 7:15

Yeah, I mean, my sense is a lot of the stuff we're seeing has been ramping up over time. So my guess is that there has been a consistent voice inside the Russian nuclear weapons community to resume nuclear tests, which, to be fair, we have that voice in the United States, too. But my sense is that the Ukraine war, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting isolation of the Russians because of their shitty fucking behavior is creating the political atmosphere in which that group can advance its agenda and making it more likely that they'll test.

And so although I don't think the people who want to test want to test just to do it as a A temper tantrum or just as a symbolic step the fact that it will work as that it that it gives them the option of rattling the saber so to speak makes it easier for them i think to win the internal debate about doing the thing that they want to do

Aaron 8:33

The other thing maybe as a tip-off that this is actually something serious and not just idle bluster or chatter is it seems like the US is taking it seriously in that there was the floating of reciprocal visits to testing facilities basically to prove a negative that testing isn't going on beyond – let's say explosive testing isn't going on.

Jeffrey 8:55

Yeah, in our story for CNN, we highlighted satellite imagery of the U.S. test site as well as the Chinese and the Russian test site to make the point that if you were the Russians and the Chinese looking at the U.S., And even though I think that the subcritical tests, which produce no nuclear yield at Nevada, are pretty transparent, if all you did was look at satellite imagery of the site, you would see a lot of activity.

Now, again, the U.S. has been really transparent. A lot of that activity is to expand the ability to do subcritical tests, which actually makes it less likely that the You know, the reality is, is that it's hard to verify that subcritical tests remain subcritical. And the U.S. also has a policy of being able to conduct a real yield test on, you know, relatively short notice.

And so... The best case scenario is that the Russians and the Chinese are just mirroring those postures. And even then, in that best case scenario, there is still this kind of mutual suspicion, which I think you see Putin expressing. And I'm not sure how sincere it is. I suspect it is sincere because world leaders are paranoid where they look at the stuff we're doing and they say, oh, see, they're secretly they're getting ready.

They're going to do it. And so they can tell themselves the story that they're not actually going first because we were going to go first anyway. So I worry a lot about that. And I think to their credit, you know, you have seen Jill Ruby, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, and now you have seen the Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, openly...

Propose Visits of a kind that by the way, I tried to get the Obama administration to propose and they just basically You know patted me on my head and told me to you know go away and But even though it's to their credit, like, I think it's too late. You know, the Russian foreign minister just, you know, is doing Russian foreign minister stuff.

He's complaining that they don't that they haven't received a formal invitation, you know, which is like, I don't I don't know if that means it's got to come on, you know. Like, nice paper in a pretty envelope with a seal delivered by, like, a horse-drawn carriage. Like, I don't know what the f*** he wants, right? Like, the U.S. and Russia still meet in the P5 context, and you now have increasingly senior officials from the U.S. saying, like, we're open to test site transparency.

I think this is an excuse from the Russians. They are no longer interested in reciprocal test site transparency because they think they're seriously considering testing. —

Aaron 11:51

So what's the evidence that you all are seeing to back up, let's say, the declaratory statements that they're maybe dipping their toe in the water?

Jeffrey 12:02

So I would say there are really two things. One is the Shoigu visit, which, by the way, the Russians didn't admit Shoigu went to the test site. They said he went to Novaya Zemlya, but they didn't indicate where he went in Novaya Zemlya in the official announcement other than to describe, like, a kindergarten he visited at, you know, at a different location.

Anyway. Why he needed to go all the way to Novaya Zemlya to check out a kindergarten, you know, like whatever. But we actually were able to geolocate all of the pictures they took. And it's really interesting because he went into Rogachevo, I guess. Sorry, my Russian is terrible. Continuing the Arms Control Wonk podcast tradition of horribly mispronouncing foreign things.

Aaron 12:50

It would be worse if you pronounced it correctly. It would be completely off-brand.

Jeffrey 12:54

Yes. So they admitted that's where the kindergarten was and they had a bunch of pictures of him there. But then we were able to and this was kind of fun. And I don't know this will ever see the light of day, but it was nifty. They showed all these images of the landscape outside his helicopter and we geolocated those.

So we actually were able to retrace his flight path up the coast to Severny, including one really nice comparison we did, which is like a beautiful advertisement for Planets 3 meter data, because we got a satellite image on the same day or pretty close to the same day as the flight. And you could even see like the snow melt patterns were the same.

And then there's... A clear shot of him exiting the helicopter at Severny, which is where the test site is. And then he's not pictured, but another official in his delegation is pictured at this construction site. They're doing enormous construction in the main support area where they're building a huge new building. Which I presume is not for doing the tests themselves, right?

They do those off in the mountains, but I think it's a sign of new facilities. You know, they could be new housing, new administrative offices. You don't really know, but they're totally revamping that site. They're pouring, you know, a significant amount of funding into new buildings, which they've been doing for a few years, but like it's now more than ever.

It's just like a lot more.

Aaron 14:31

What do you make of his claim that – so do you think that his claims that they need to test again, sort of the people are saying, they're just asking questions sort of like approach to this. Do you think that's linked to their sort of exotic sort of new delivery systems that they rolled out a couple of years ago?

Or do you think that this is him just finding an excuse to do something because he thinks the US is doing it?

Jeffrey 14:55

You know, I think that nuclear weapons designers want to conduct tests. That's just how they look at what they do. You know, I mean, there's... It's funny because test is a sort of strange word because we never conducted nuclear explosions in enough numbers, even though we conducted more than a thousand of them, but never really enough that you would say that we had like statistical confidence in the weapons that were being produced.

In fact, they almost never tested stockpiled weapons. In fact, they never tested stockpiled weapons until people said, you never test stockpiled weapons. And then they did like a very limited number of tests. So you couldn't say that anymore. But, you know, one test is not statistical confidence make. So I think that's how designers look at the world.

But there were these really powerful political constraints. And what's happened now is those political constraints are off. So just like the Russians walked away from the START treaty, I think that they have this idea that by walking away from the CTBT... And resuming nuclear testing and making the world more dangerous, that that somehow is going to give them leverage and, you know, discourage us from seeing the defense of Ukraine through to the end.

So yeah, I mean, you know, look, I don't want to be too pessimistic because it hasn't happened yet. And I appreciate the fact that the Biden administration is trying to prevent it from happening. And, you know, there's a chance Putin will come to his senses. There's a chance Putin will stroke out. You know, who knows what could head this off?

So I don't want to say that it's certain that they're going to test. But boy, that it just that the evidence keeps piling up that that's where we're headed. And I think, yeah, the decision to blame the U.S. is about creating an argument that, you know, tankies can embrace. That it's, you know, not their fault, the shit they're about to do.

Aaron 17:00

I mean, at some respect, we can rationalize it and understand it. But on the other hand, it's really a throwback to very paranoid thinking. And it would be a significant setback for... I guess global relations. I don't know how else to say it. Lighten off another nuke, particularly from the Russian side, given all the concerns about escalation in Ukraine would be considerably escalatory in my opinion.

Jeffrey 17:26

Yeah, I mean, I think the signal would be interpreted as a nuclear threat, which I think Putin would be happy about, but that will have all the negative repercussions that one would imagine, because I don't think... I think every time he kind of toys with nuclear threats, I don't think it has the effect he wants, right? It doesn't seem to...

It doesn't cause us to back down. It makes us think he's crazy and therefore reinforces the need to resist. Which, by the way, my friend Todd Saxer wrote this. I think Matt Furman maybe was a co-author. Looked at kind of bargaining in, in, in in interstate disputes. And it turns out being a lot stronger than your neighbor is not all that great for bargaining because yes, you have a lot of leverage, but because you have so much leverage, you can't convince your neighbor that if they go along with it, that you won't then just screw them over.

Right? Like it, it, you can be too powerful to strike a bargain. I think that we have a variant of that problem, right? Or at least a closely related expression of that problem, which is every time he threatens nuclear annihilation, if he doesn't get his way, it just makes you much more terrified about letting him have his way.

Aaron 18:47

And I think they really do believe that we're doing it. This is my fundamental point is that I think what their – again, this is all looking from the outside in and the system is entirely opaque and who really knows. So those caveats aside is that they are grappling with the lack of coercive power that the nuclear weapons provide them.

I really do believe that and that – and in response, they're doing things to try and make the threat more credible and maybe that culminates in a nuclear test. In a way to try and regain some coercive leverage over the US and NATO. Because frankly, if we were to transport ourselves back into 2022 when this began, what would you have said if a British-supplied cruise missile went slamming into the Russian naval headquarters on Sevastopol?

We would have had an entirely different set of thoughts about where this was going than when that happened, what, a month ago? Like on camera, right?

Jeffrey 19:50

I mean, it's wild. I mean, it goes back to the op-ed you and I wrote where deterrence is functioning, but it's only functioning because it might break down.

Aaron 20:08

Right. It's uncomfortable.

Jeffrey 20:11

Yeah. I think they're uncomfortable. Yeah. They're very uncomfortable and they're trying to wriggle free. And it's interesting because there are a lot of people that are like, oh, well, they're uncomfortable. We should let them wriggle free. And it's like, that probably doesn't fix your problem because then it starts to undermine the value of the deterrent. I mean, it's almost like holding a dove in your hand.

You have to squeeze a little.

Aaron 20:40

You have to squeeze a little, but then again, a little. You don't want to kill it. You don't want to kill it, right? But then it's how much do you squeeze?

Jeffrey 20:46

But you can't just let the dove fly away either. Like it's a really delicate balance. And it makes sense to me that they're looking at things like resuming nuclear testing as a way to wiggle a little bit. But I suspect it will cause us to squeeze a little tighter, which generally I think is a good idea. Although, you know, like not too tight.

Aaron 21:07

I don't know. We can't even fund the government or we may not even be able to fund the government, let alone continued weapons purchases for Ukraine. And so I'm not sure.

Jeffrey 21:14

Yeah, now that Code Pink and Marjorie Taylor Greene are best buddies. That's just that was a wild photo.

Aaron 21:19

That was a wild photo.

Jeffrey 21:22

But OK, if I could just emote for a second.

Aaron 21:24

It's your podcast.

Jeffrey 21:26

Spent the hour podcast. I spent the entirety of the occupation of Iraq. Listening to these assholes earnestly tell me that if we don't fight them over there, we'll have to fight them here. I was there. Yeah. How many times did you hear that? Many times. So, okay. That's insane. Right. It has nothing to do with Iraq. And now it's just like, oh, well, you know, We can just let Putin have Ukraine.

It'll be fine.

Aaron 21:57

It'll be fine.

Jeffrey 21:58

I mean, everything will work itself out. Really?

Aaron 22:01

But let me ask you something else because Putin – I didn't realize it was at Valdi. So Putin at Valdi today – He also claimed that Skyfall, Borovestnik...

Jeffrey 22:12

Yes, Borovestnik. Storm Petrol.

Aaron 22:16

Skyfall, right? This is the air-flying nuclear reactor that I think went boom and killed a bunch of people when they tried to fish out of the water.

Jeffrey 22:24

Yeah, when they tried to fish it out of the water. That's right.

Aaron 22:26

An entirely bad thing. One assumes it spews radiation in its wake. He claimed that they got it from... It's hard to imagine how it doesn't. You know, Russian designers...

Jeffrey 22:39

Shielding nuclear reactors is really heavy, and the last thing you want in a cruise missile is something that's really heavy, so I'm guessing it's an open, unshielded nuclear reactor that...

Aaron 22:49

It claims they have a successful test flight. Now, I don't know if this is true or not, like, if they've had a successful test flight. I don't know what successful test flight means, but there's... There's secondary signs that you can pick up from satellite imagery that suggests that they were going to test this thing as well.

Jeffrey 23:07

Yeah. I'm kind of bummed about it because we were one of the groups following it and like, we just didn't get off our ass. And we had actually, we were talking to CNN about that story too. And we just, I know we, we got scooped. So one of our, one of our Slack Members is the person who has been following this super closely.

And I think his Twitter account's locked, so I'm probably not going to say his name. But, like, you know who you are. You're awesome. And so he noted some ship traffic. Mm-hmm. And... We tasked a satellite image with Planet, which we then sat on for too long and I guess he then, as part of a Bellingcat thing, also Bellingcat tasked against the same location, and so I don't know whose task went in first.

Bellingcat wrote it up and said like, oh, hey, look, there's a lot of activity at the place in the Via Zemli, which is a different location in the Via Zemli. It's close to the nuclear test site, but it is a different location, so you have to task separately because it's far enough away.

Aaron 24:26

It's an island off the main test site, isn't it?

Jeffrey 24:30

No, no, it's...

Aaron 24:31

It's the same peninsula?

Jeffrey 24:33

It's the same island, it's just... It's sort of separated by a bunch of mountains. And it kind of sticks out. So it's like water on three sides, basically. It's not really a square, so it's not really three sides. But you get the idea. It kind of juts out a little bit. And... You know, like... You could see they were getting ready to do a test.

They had the environmental shelter pulled back. They had what looked to me like a canister on site. Interestingly, Bellingcat didn't say it was a canister, and they beat us to it anyway, so I'm not going to go whine about it because I might be wrong. It might not be a canister, but it looked like a canister to me.

A bunch of shipping containers, a lot of activity. Then the Russians put up air, airspace restrictions. And then Michael Dutzman did a really nice job, which some other people have picked up on. We watched, there are these specialized aircraft that, that they use, which move from Moscow up to Novaya Zemlya. And then I think said slack person even detected some of the contrails of the aircraft flying around.

So like all of that Strongly suggests, and then the New York Times came and did a big thing on it too. All of that strongly suggests that they were preparing at that point to do a test, and you know, eventually they were going to do it. And so I, I take Putin at his word that they did it. I, I don't know if it worked or not, but you know, he says it did, and you know, I guess he gets to say.

Aaron 26:09

So I mean, I'm trying to come up with something just when I, when I saw the two things paired together. Okay.

Jeffrey 26:16

Sorry. Is it, is it, we're out of time and you're looking for our happy note?

Aaron 26:19

Okay.

Jeffrey 26:20

Cause there's not one.

Aaron 26:21

I don't have a happy note, but when I saw the two together, right. So when I taught in the same speech, when he was talking about resuming nuclear testing and at the same time that we tested skyfall and it was successful, whether or not that's true, I guess we'll find out in a couple of days, weeks, months, or never.

I saw it as part of the same problem as the – well, I'm going to call it the prince, the prince corollary. When doves cry, right? When doves fly. So it's like purple rain up there. You just need to sort of like be gentle with it but not kill it. And I don't – again, I felt like he was signaling.

I read those two things together.

Jeffrey 26:58

I think that's exactly right. I think he has only periodically given us updates on the menagerie of bizarro science fiction weapons, right? He did it a few years ago when he unveiled them all because he wanted to make a point about their ability to defeat U.S. missile defenses. In this speech, he talked about nuclear testing. He talked about Sarmat going on combat duty.

And he talked about Burevestnik and maybe a couple other things. I haven't looked through the whole speech yet. I think it's absolutely a signal, right? It's a reminder of Russia's nuclear potential because I think they believe that their way to leverage opposition to continued NATO support of Ukraine is to raise the specter of a nuclear war, right?

It's we have to do what the Russians say or we're all going to die.

Aaron 27:52

Right. That's a playbook that they used, I mean, basically throughout the Cold War. And I think it's more aimed at Euros than it is at us at the moment.

Jeffrey 28:02

And by the way, at the moment, slightly successful in that the Germans won't cough up Taurus.

Aaron 28:07

Right. I mean...

Jeffrey 28:09

You know, so there is this, I mean, I think a major focus of Putin's diplomacy is Germany's neutrality, creating enough political problems in Germany so that German leaders will distance themselves from NATO and try to play this kind of peacemaker mediator role, which, you know, befits a guy who was in fucking Dresden when the wall came down.

Aaron 28:35

His Hasselhoff moment, not to be confused with Tempelhoff.

Jeffrey 28:40

I was just at Temple Hoff. I had a day to kill, a mental health day because I couldn't go all the way back to California before coming to New York. And one thing I did was spend the day just walking around Temple Hoff, which is now a park.

Aaron 28:55

I kind of miss that airport. I know people hate it, but it wasn't a bad airport. I enjoyed it.

Jeffrey 29:00

I never got to fly through it.

Aaron 29:02

I did it once. It's just for the history, man. You just listen to all these, read all these books about the Cold War. It goes back to the Third Reich. It's a cool place.

Jeffrey 29:11

Yeah, I mean, it's a... Beautiful example of National Socialist architecture. I mean, it's, let's say it's time relevant to its era. It, it, you know, it evokes exactly what it's supposed to evoke. You know, I just kept looking at thinking like, think about the airlift, think about the airlift, think about the airlift. And to be fair, the thing didn't open during the war.

Aaron 29:41

No, it was designed.

Jeffrey 29:41

Right. And built, but I think they never got around to opening it.

Aaron 29:46

And ultimately, we occupied it. So who knows? We showed them who's boss, right? So Tempelhof, not Hasselhoff. Right.

Jeffrey 29:54

Then I managed to work Princeton too. Yeah, you're killing it. No, they've got like a nice like community garden there. People are rollerblading. There's a refugee camp, which is, you know, like a good use of space because refugees deserve space, but also like a little bit, you know, kind of a downer. You know, there's a beer garden.

It's a really interesting use of space in the center of Berlin, right? In an area that probably is worth like $11 billion.

Aaron 30:25

So from National Socialism to German Pacifism, all embodied in one single place.

Jeffrey 30:31

Yeah, I mean, really, that whole trip to Berlin... Got reignited my interest both in euro missiles and and and some dark tourism associated with the war so i did i did do the furor bunker well so i think people this is we've gone off the rails but i think people will be leaving this episode wondering if they need to build their own bunkers right so like maybe they can get i mean you know There are enough shovels to grow around.

Everybody's going to make it.

Aaron 31:01

Everybody's going to make it. Everything's going to be okay. You can just keep reassuring yourself that when you listen to this episode.

Jeffrey 31:08

I mean, seriously, what I would say is, since we do freak people out, this is what it's going to be like. Yeah, totally. Deterrence is going to keep functioning, and when deterrence functions, it's scary. So this is just what it's going to be like.

Aaron 31:23

No, my last sort of think tank thing was a track two in Europe. That I helped put on. And the question I kept asking all these Europeans who came was like, are you ready for this? Cause like, it's not just talking about industrial base and giving Ukraine artillery shells. It's that in 20 years, we'll still be dealing with this nonsense and worried about being blown up.

Jeffrey 31:44

Yeah. It's 1961, man.

Aaron 31:47

I can make another joke. Time to go back to San Francisco in eight years. So with that I think we've gone completely off the rails. Well, okay. So with that, we've gone completely off the rails. We've already had a shout out to our Slack channel where I guess the Novaya Zemlya experts gather, they hang, they compare notes, and you too can get the first crack before the New York Times of when they're going to test Skyfall next.

So to become a member of the coolest place, patreon.com slash ACW podcast, $3 student, $5 if you're not, you get to join the world's most exclusive club for Novaya Zemlya watchers.

Jeffrey 32:23

Hey, Aaron. Thanks for talking to me today.

Aaron 32:25

It's been real, man. We got to do this more. You got to stop traveling. I got to stop working.

Jeffrey 32:30

For the rest of you, thanks for listening.